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I think one area where we may be losing the secrets is with vacuum tube amplifier behaviour and design. Electrical Engineering students no longer study it (for
by retrogradeorbit 13y ago
I think one area where we may be losing the secrets is with vacuum tube amplifier behaviour and design. Electrical Engineering students no longer study it (for obvious reasons... its all been replaced with solid state) but it is still important in audio recording. Companies still make tube gear (like for example Universal Audio in California) but I have heard that it is becoming basically impossible to hire an electrical engineer with tube circuit design skills.
- prodigal_erik 13y agoThis makes me more relieved that Jeri Ellsworth managed to make transistors (in a kiln starting with a plain silicon wafer) after interviewing retired Fairchild engineers about some details. At least we probably won't lose that, assuming someone survives who watched her videos.
- Daniel_Newby 13y agoVacuum tube audio is the very picture of a solved problem. You can look it up in a textbook or copy the schematic of old equipment. Vacuum device engineering is alive and well. It's just that a top radio power designer or particle accelerator designer won't throw away his career to become a handbook engineer designing antique reproductions at a what amounts to a toy company.
- mng2 13y agoTubes aren't all that terribly different from transistors; the characteristic curves are slightly different but the circuit topologies are basically the same as those of transistor circuits.